one would regret not studying

From the following day, Hiro began to devote many hours to his studies. He would stay in the classroom alone after all classes ended, establishing a routine of reviewing the day's lessons and preparing for the next day's class before leaving for home every day.

While Hiro was silently tackling his homework, he heard talking. Someone was walking down the hallway and getting closer.

“Sorry, I have some pending work.”

“OK, then I can help you with that. That way, you can free up some time, right?”

It was adult voices. Sensing an uneasy tone in the way they spoke, Hiro turned his head toward the hallway and saw a familiar face through the window.

Hiro remembered her being introduced at the entrance ceremony as someone who had joined the school staff this spring. She was the new teacher. She doesn't have class of her own now, and Hiro didn't have a chance to interact with her. Since Hiro hardly knew anything about her, it was all the more surprising when she noticed him and their eyes met, and he heard his name called.

“Hiro-kun! I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Hiro had only remained in the classroom for self-study and had not, in fact, been waiting for her. However, seeing her repeat the meaningful wink, he swallowed the words of denial.

“Um...I'm alright.”

“Well then, I need to have a word with a student now.”

She entered the classroom. The male teacher who remained in the hallway only poked his head inside the room and shot a clearly annoyed look at Hiro.

“I see. In that case, there's nothing for it, I suppose... I'll see you later, Shiga-sensei.”

Although the look was unpleasant, Hiro was able to recall her name.

“Thank you for taking the time, Shiga-sensei.”

Her suit was still like new, her blouse neatly pressed, and her hair tied back precisely. However, her expression looked somewhat weary.

Shiga-sensei listened intently to the sounds in the hallway, waited until she was sure her colleague had left, and then let out a sigh of exasperation.

"Thank you for playing along. You're fine now."

Hiro could understand the situation. Hiro has seen that dynamic countless times since middle school: a boy who bothers the girls in his class. It's that perpetual, somehow persistent vicious cycle where they keep bothering the girls because they want attention, but it just makes them disliked and avoided.

Realizing that these wretched adolescent changes apparently continue even into adulthood, Hiro felt a sense of despair and became dizzy.

No, there's no need to feel anxious. To avoid turning out like that, I'm going to choose the good changes. I'll make sure not to choose the path of failure—the one I know I will regret.

Regaining his composure, Hiro exhaled through his nose and opened his eyes, only to find Shiga-sensei standing right in front of him, looking down at the notebook on his desk.

"Oh, you're actually studying! That's good. Why the classroom, though?"

"The library feels stifling because I keep thinking, 'I can't make any noise,' and I can concentrate well enough here."

"You can't concentrate at home?"

"My older brother is a rōnin [a student preparing for university entrance exams after failing the first attempt], and he bothers me when I try to study at home."

It is a truly ridiculous situation. He regretted neglecting his studies and supposedly advised Hiro not to do the same, yet Hiro's actual studying seems to get on his nerves. The underlying idea that it irritates him for someone else to avoid the hole he fell into and succeed is something Hiro can sympathize with, though.

"I have someone who bothers me in the staff room too—a nasty person who keeps me from getting any work done," Shiga-sensei said. Hiro knew that person wasn't actually nasty, but because he didn't want to encourage that kind of topic, he simply shrugged and let it go.

"Now that you mention it, I did hear from other teachers that you have an older brother. He attended this school until last year, right? I heard he was an outstanding student... or maybe extremely troubled... or perhaps terribly isolated..."

Shiga-sensei seemed confused by the hard-to-pin-down reputation of the person. Hiro could easily explain why this was the case, but knowing that the teachers were discussing his brother made him feel a little uncomfortable and embarrassed, so he stayed silent.

"You and your brother get along well, then?"

"I don't know, but I think so. Even without Mom around, we cooperate to handle the housework."

"Oh?"

Shiga-sensei stopped working, and Hiro shook his head.

"She's not dead. She just went on a trip. Since I started middle school, she's been taking a 'You've Earned It, Parenting Break.' It's been about a month now, I guess."

"A month? That's quite a long time."

"Well, she was doing it for nearly thirty years. We have eight kids."

“thirty years!”

Shiga-sensei completely dropped her pen and turned to face Hiro.

“nearlly,yeah.”

“seven kids!”

“Most of us aren't children anymore,though. ”

While Shiga-sensei was frozen in astonishment, she seemed to have suddenly grasped why the rumors about Hiro's older brother were so varied.

"I see, I absolutely see." Shiga-sensei murmured. "Well, no one can complain about a one-month break after all that."

"Actually, my grandmother complained."

"Your grandmother? Do you mean your father's mother, by any chance?"

"Yeah. 'If the daughter-in-law gets a break, I'm taking one too,'.” Noticing the change in Hiro's tone, Shiga-sensei realized he was imitating his grandmother, and she laughed, then, she covered her mouth with her hand to hide it. Laughing at a student's family conflict was not exactly good behavior for a teacher.

“And she took Grandpa on a trip with her." "She emptied the house just to compete with the daughter-in-law?" "Yeah. So right now, the only legitimate adult at home is Dad, but we're making it work because the family is cooperating and getting along."

Just as the conversation reached a pause, Hiro finished the assignment he needed to complete. Shiga-sensei, on the other hand, looked like she would be working for a while longer. As he considered whether he should stick around a little longer to act as a "nuisance shield," a topic occurred to him that he wanted to bring up with her.

"Shiga-sensei, do you have any regrets from when you were in middle school? Like, 'I wish I hadn't done this,' or 'I wish I had done that'?"

Upon hearing the question, Shiga-sensei suddenly lifted her gaze from her documents, raised her head, and froze for several seconds, her eyes fixed on some distant point. Then, she let out a long, deep sigh. "Why do you ask such a thing?" Her voice was terribly dark and rigid.

Sensing he had asked something inappropriate, Hiro became tense. He began to explain quickly: "I'm just putting Dad's advice into practice. He says that if you hear about an older person's mistakes beforehand, you can avoid making the same ones yourself."

"So you weren't trying to pry into my privacy unnecessarily?" "I had no such intention. Actually, the reason I'm studying right now is because my rōnin brother told me, 'You should study.'"

Though he wasn't sure if his sincerity in seeking advice had been conveyed, Hiro was relieved to see a smile in Shiga-sensei's eyes, which were turned toward him.

"You asked your rōnin brother about his regrets? You must have gotten scolded for that." Shiga-sensei sees right through me, Hiro thought. "As teachers, we're not supposed to say that we made mistakes or took wrong turns on our way to becoming capable of teaching and guiding you students." Hiro gave a wry smile, realizing she was saying something similar to his father.

"Well, let's see. It's going to be a vague answer, but I suppose I wish I had gained more diverse experiences. Enjoying life is very important, but now I think I could have also accumulated more beneficial experiences. However, back then, I couldn't even think about the future, so foreseeing that I should have done something back then is just impossible."

Hiro found it strange that Shiga-sensei spoke of her regrets in a tone that was refreshing and lacked the agony of his brother's. He suspected that it might be difficult to get advice about regret from someone who hadn't experienced a piercing failure.

Shiga-sensei continued, "In that regard, I think studying is good because it's never wasted. When you eventually find something you want to do in the future, what you're studying now will surely be useful."

Since Hiro was simply following his brother's advice blindly and didn't truly understand the meaning of it, Shiga-sensei noticed his lack of comprehension and added: "It's like carefully obeying traffic rules now, for the day you might want to become the president."

"Isn't it clearer to say 'saving money for when you find something you want to buy'?" "Oh, that's true. I see…. So you're going to live your middle school life without regrets, using your older brother close by as a model," Shiga-sensei said, smiling gently when Hiro nodded. "In that case, you'll surely become a wonderful adult." Hiro snorted proudly. "After all, there are six of them."

On the following days, Hiro continued his habit of staying in the classroom to study. Shiga-sensei frequently accompanied him, dealing with her own work. As days turned into weeks, seeing the earnest student studying alone day after day, Shiga-sensei began to worry about him.

"It's impressive how hard you work every day. I hear your exam results were quite good, too, right?" "Yeah. I was in the middle of the pack in the test right after enrollment, but this time I was among the top few, so Dad was surprised."

As a teacher, she should have been delighted that the student's grades had improved, but that was not where her concern lay now. While the other students were deepening their friendships through club activities or socializing, this boy silently devoted himself solely to his textbooks. She didn't believe there was anything wrong with that, but seeing only scenes like this made her worried.

"You really do stay in the classroom every day... Don't you ever hang out with your friends?" Although she knew she needed to be tactful about how to bring it up, Shiga-sensei ended up asking him directly, and she panicked internally.

"I'm not saying you don't have friends and are lonely, okay? Quite the opposite, in fact. I heard from another teacher that they saw you having trouble with friends right after you enrolled."

Hiro, who usually didn't stop writing even while speaking, turned to face Shiga-sensei and snorted in admiration. "Huh. Teachers really do pay close attention to us, don't they?"

"It's not like I'm studying because I don't have any friends. I told you before, didn't I? I'm just putting my brother's advice into practice. It's not even like someone did something wrong and we fought." The curt gesture of him trying to immediately turn back to his textbook looked like a facade to prevent the loneliness etched in his expression from being noticed, so Shiga-sensei grasped Hiro's shoulder and made him face her.

"You asked about my regrets. Unlike before, I'll give you a concrete answer. It's not reconciling with a friend I had a falling out with. It's not managing to deepen a friendship with someone I was starting to get close to. This can affect your life as much as failing an exam or failing to get a job."

Meeting his eyes, which were frozen in surprise, she continued."It's good to take someone's advice into account, but perhaps a regret is already starting within you, too?"

Hiro kept his eyes cast down in silence for a while, then looked up at the ceiling.

Although Hiro had felt anger and indignation toward his friends who had suddenly changed, he had already learned that such change seemed to be a natural process. And reflecting on it now, he realized that the anger and indignation might not have been directed at them at all. It might have been a reflexive reaction, triggered by the trauma of being pushed away by Miu-neechan when he was a child.

He thought: "It might have been insincere to take the position of being 'hurt' without properly revealing my true feelings."

Once his thoughts were settled, Hiro nodded deeply. "Thank you, Sensei. I’ll think about this."

This time it was Shiga-sensei's turn to widen her eyes in surprise. "You're accepting that so readily. I thought there would be a little more pushback."

Hiro had been preparing to explain the family motto: the youngest brother must remain humble because he knows less and is less capable than anyone else. However, Shiga-sensei's next words prevented him from doing so."That's quite an achievement, considering you're an adolescent."

"I'm not like that at all!" Hiro's face turned bright red, and he bolted out of the classroom. Left alone, Shiga-sensei murmured, dumbfounded, "This difficulty in handling him... I think it's exactly the case."　

The next day after school, Shiga-sensei walked down the school hallway. As she approached the classroom where Hiro usually stayed behind, she heard lively voices, different from usual.She could make out Hiro's voice among the sounds of several male students.

Shiga-sensei quietly peeked through the small window in the door and saw that a study group was apparently taking place inside.

"Oh, I see, I see! So that's what this meant." "It's bad if you stumble on the basics, because it affects everything later on." "Did your brother stumble, which is why he's a rōnin?" "That might be the case." "Does it really matter if you can't do it?" "It's better to be able to do it than not, right?"

It seemed Hiro was moving among the desks where his friends were sitting, teaching them the material.

Had he been relied on because his grades improved? In any case, it’s good they reconciled. Just as Shiga-sensei decided it would be better not to intervene and began to leave, she was spotted by Hiro, who happened to glance back.

"Shiga-sensei!" Hiro called out her name and bolted out of the classroom. "I was wrong. I was troubled because everyone suddenly started doing different things and I couldn't enjoy it, but I didn't have to stubbornly insist on the same old activities. I realized that if I was with everyone, anything—even studying—would have been fine."

Watching him excitedly rattle off the words in a rush, Shiga-sensei smiled and nodded. "I'm glad that my intrusive comment yesterday didn't turn into my latest regret."

Since she was not fully acquainted with their circumstances, she couldn't grasp the details of what he was saying. However, seeing this guileless, childlike smile, she could tell that adolescence had apparently not yet fully arrived for him.